Shaping a greener future

At Bruntwood, we believe our purpose is to create thriving cities. Along with creating communities in and around our buildings, and our commitment to arts and culture and people’s skills and talents; shaping greener futures is one of our top priorities.

And what better time to celebrate how we’re really brought this commitment to life than during National Tree Week.

National Tree Week first began in 1975 and is now the UK’s largest annual tree celebration - the timing of which coincides with the start of the winter tree planting season - and it has an aim of inspiring 250,000 people plant 1,000,000 trees.

And we make a brilliant contribution to this worthy goal - thanks in no small part to our relationship with City of Trees.

Bruntwood & City of Trees - an inspiring and thriving relationship

City of Trees’ mission is to plant three million trees across Greater Manchester. They want to re-invigorate the region’s landscape and transform into a well-used, well-loved area of woodland that everyone can enjoy. To help them reach their goal, they invite individual, community organisation, charity, local action group, business or company you can get involved.

This year alone, 93 Bruntwood colleagues signed up for the charity’s Citizen Forester events planting trees, managing woodland, and keeping our green spaces in great shape for our local communities.

Last Christmas, we asked our customers to make donations to the charity and in return we promised to plant a tree in their name. And earlier this year, we held two green away days where around 50 customers and school children (Button Lane and Barlow Hall primary schools) planted 750 trees at Parkway Playing Fields.

Our commitment to City of Trees doesn’t just stop with Bruntwood. The Oglesby Charitable Trust was one of the original founders of the charity and has helped develop and drive great relationships to help reach that three million trees goal.

And our commitment to a greener future, just doesn’t stop with trees either; as our recent Green Apple Awards win demonstrates so well.

A winning, and sustainable, combination

The Green Apple Awards began in 1994 and are now known as one of the country’s major environmental accolades. And at this year’s ceremony, we took home a bronze award!

Together with Smart Controls Group we were recognised for “Environmental Best Practice” for our project, Commercial Union Manchester - Carbon Reduction Initiative”.

A couple of weeks ago we were presented with our trophy and certificate at a glittering presentation ceremony hosted by Liz Kendall MP at the Houses of Parliament. At the awards ceremony we were recognised for some of the great initiatives we had implemented to bring this project to life including, HVAC optimisation and planting 500 trees to the estate grounds.

There’s more to come

Our relationship with City of Trees and our Green Apple award winning partnership are just two examples of how we’re shaping greener futures. We have more planned in the new year and will be updating everyone very soon.